Gold’s swoon has triggered a good deal of schadenfreude, some subtle, some less so.
It’s hardly a surprise after eleven years of gains and often tiresome crowing from its more partisan supporters. Question is, apart from the emotional satisfaction of putting the boot in, are these critics justified?
Their complaints seem to revolve around four principal themes: Continue reading
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Posted in Economics, Markets, Money and Credit
If central banking were a stock, you’d go short.
Blue-chip mystique still clings to it but you can feel the reputational parabola slowly gathering momentum on the downside. Its projects are too large and diffuse, the resources to achieve them too crude and there are mounting signs of unhappiness and confusion at the top.
Given their long-standing rock star status, pity the central banker; the fall from grace may be vertiginous.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Governor of the Old Lady seems more attuned to this unfolding trend than most. On my reading, he metaphorically ran up the white flag in a recent speech. It was the oddest mixture of explanations, implicit apologies and rationalisations imaginable from such an august perch. Do have a look; it’s not long.
King finished with an amusing touch: “As for the MPC [Monetary Policy Committee], you can be sure we shall be looking for as much guidance as we can find, divine or otherwise. What better inspiration than the memory of those children on Rhossili beach singing Cwm Rhondda.”
Perhaps the South Wales Chamber of Commerce seemed a forgiving place to lay out some of central banking’s many puzzles.
Put simply, his message was: I know what we’re doing seems a bit crazy, and I know all the fundamental problems are still out there waiting to be solved, but what else can we do?
What’s even scarier is that I understand what he means. Continue reading
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Posted in Banking, Financial Systems, Money and Credit, Politics
Tagged Banking, Central Banking, Deflation, financial systems, hyperinflation
In the wake of the crisis, the question of whether financial markets are capable of effective self-regulation took centre stage. The near unanimous verdict was that they are not. The crisis itself, following on as it did from a period of extended deregulation, seemed to provide a definitive QED. So much so that surprisingly little attention has been devoted to working out why this might be so.
It has, in short, become an article of received wisdom, rarely questioned other than at sites like The Cobden Centre.
Andrew Haldane[1] of the Bank of England did so in a recent speech. Although I’m not convinced he always followed the logic of his analysis to its natural conclusion, he clearly outlined the structural developments that led to the current debacle and offered several sensible policy suggestions.
It was a long speech: the transcript runs to eighteen closely typed pages with a further eleven of references, charts and tables. It would make no sense for me to try to cover the whole thing in any detail: for those sufficiently interested in the topic, do read the original.
What I want to do is bring forward enough of the material to enable a closer focus on some of the more critical issues, and to highlight a few areas where I think Mr. Haldane may be in error.
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Posted in Banking, Economics, Financial Systems, Money and Credit, Regulatory
Martin Wolf has usually managed to moderate his inner interventionist. No longer, it seems. In his most recent column, he casts caution aside:
“The time has come to employ this nuclear option [the printing press] on a grand scale.”
Not doing so, he says, would ensure a renewed recession with increased unemployment, falling house prices, reduced real business investment and so on. I think he’s right that these unhappy events are on the way. Question is, would employing his nuclear option make things any better?
To answer that we need to understand why we’re beset by all these difficulties. Wolf sees the root problem as feeble demand. Again, I think he’s right, but only in the sense that it’s the most visible, proximate cause. There’s a deeper question he doesn’t address; why is demand so weak? If the reasons are structural, throwing money at the problem is unlikely to help. Indeed, it could just as easily make matters worse by impeding the necessary adjustments.
The key question, then, is whether pre-GFC growth was sustainable. If instead it was a hothouse flower, then trying to revive it outside of the conditions that allowed it to flourish is not only impossible but foolish. Continue reading
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Posted in Banking, Economics, Financial Systems, Money and Credit, Politics
We’re fooling ourselves if we blame the recent crisis on character defects unique to our time, be it unusually lax regulators, particularly shortsighted politicians, or financial market participants avaricious beyond the norm.
Truth is, each of these qualities fluctuates with the prevailing social mood: they’re inherently pro-cyclical. When it would be ideal from society’s point of view for them to zig, they tend to zag. Nor is there much reason to think this is going to change anytime soon. We’re human, all too human, and so would be well advised to insulate critical social systems from our long-term shifts in sentiment.
Easier said than done, though. Not only because designing foolproof (or, more accurately, resilient) systems isn’t easy, but also because even assuming we do there’s every chance our progeny will find a way to undo them during the next great wave of optimism.
Still, we can but try.
Adair Turner (chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority) and Mervyn King (Governor of the Bank of England) are both acutely aware of this dilemma. Far more than any other senior financial markets officials, they try to get at the deeper underlying causes.
On Monday, October 25th, King gave a talk in New York entitled “Banking: From Bagehot to Basel, and Back Again”. Continue reading
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Posted in Banking, Essay, Financial Systems, Money and Credit, Regulatory
Markets, indeed economies as a whole, are complex adaptive systems. Like biological ecosystems, they continuously and spontaneously order themselves in response to unfolding influences, large and small, internal and external.
When it comes to nature, we’re both part of it and a profound external influence. We shape the world around us for ill and sometimes for good, not only through deliberate actions but also, of course, merely by being here. Some of our activities and their consequences in the natural world, were we only willing to listen, could teach us much about how to better manage man-made systems such as the markets and the economy.
Forestry management provides a striking example. Our natural inclination is to put fires out wherever we can, not only to safeguard valuable property but also to protect the forests themselves and their many wild occupants.
In pursuing this practice, however, subtle changes take place over time. Dead trees and fallen branches accumulate and the undergrowth becomes thicker and much more widespread. Finally a fire occurs that we’re unable to stop, one that feeds on all the detritus to produce firestorms so powerful they can at times fundamentally change a whole ecosystem.[1]
The analogy to our economic management in recent decades is obvious, particularly when it comes to the financial system. There too, fires were continuously put out, all with the laudable goal of sidestepping the pain and distress of downturns. Continue reading
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Posted in Economics, Essay, Financial Systems, Markets, Politics, Regulatory
I don’t doubt Krugman’s right to suggest we’re in the early stages of a Third Depression. The last few years have been a first instalment in what will prove to be a drawnout, volatile and painful downturn. I also agree it’s “primarily [about] a failure of policy”. Where we differ is on the nature of these failures.
First though, some points of agreement.
Krugman was vocally unhappy about much of what took place during the boom years. He railed against the excesses of the financial system, and the deregulatory zeal that allowed it to run so completely out of control. He expected it all to end badly, although perhaps not quite to the degree it has. He’s also consistently argued that deflation, not inflation, is the greatest danger for the foreseeable future.
No argument, from me at least, on any of this. Nor do I really want to argue with his critique of the simplistic view put forward by those he terms “the apostles of austerity”; namely, that cutting spending and/or raising taxes won’t bring on further short-term pain. It will. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best.
The real question is whether there’s any way to avoid this pain that doesn’t bring even more disastrous consequences in its wake. Continue reading
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Posted in Economics, Financial Systems, Money and Credit
